How digital marketing can grow your small business

Digital marketing put simply is all of your digital activities associated with your business. Wikipedia defines digital marketing as “an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium“.

The key aspects of digital marketing are your website, social media profiles and content you create and share, and the principles are exactly the same as having a physical shop to attract and sell to new customers. Imagine your digital marketing as a cake shop: Your website represents your cake shop, social media is your window display and content is all your cakes displayed to show your customers what you can do. To maximise your success you need all three to work together. People won’t come in to your shop without liking your window display and won’t know how good you are without having a look at cake that you produced. Not necessarily will they want to buy the cake you already made, but it gives them the confidence that you are good dat what you do.

Content marketing is all of your activities used to engage with your target audience and it is essential for search engines to drive traffic to your website and social media accounts – and having these aspects linked up leads to organic brand presence growth over time.

Here are a few stats from recent research that show the positive impact of digital marketing businesses of all sizes are seeing:

90% of businesses say that their social media efforts have generated more exposure for their businesses

72% of businesses say relevant content creation was the most effective SEO tactic

By spending as little as six hours per week, 66% of businesses see lead generation benefits with social media

61% of organisations engaged in social selling report a positive impact on revenue growth

To create a successful digital marketing strategy for your small business, it’s essential to link content, social media and SEO together – here are a few of our tips on how to do it effectively:

1. Create and share great content

The popularity of your content leads to higher search engine rankings. Google indexes sites based on how much their content is visited, shared and liked within a time frame and it is essential for SEO – the quicker your content is indexed, the higher the organic traffic coming through to your site.

2. Share on social media

Social shares work as backlinks and contribute to higher search engine rankings. The more traffic is coming from social media to your website, the more visible your website will be. Compared to the old days, it no longer helps having your website stuffed with keywords and invisible text – Google now looks at popular social networks that link to your site and measures your site’s credibility and popularity based on the volume of links.

3. Boost your social media influence

In addition to links coming from social media, establishing yourself as credible source of information will help with ranking your website and blog higher. This means having an organically growing follower base who are relevant, reaching out to new audiences and regularly engaging with your followers.

4. Learn about basic search engine optimisation rules

SEO is not as technical is it might look – it’s more about the relevance and popularity of your content. But it’s important to understand the basic principles such as using H1, URL, meta description, title tag and most importantly using relevant keywords to answer questions that your audience is looking to answer. For a quick SEO guide, see our post 10 simple SEO tips for small businesses.